


As Time Goes By

by jenesaisquoi



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Henry Winchester - Freeform, Men of Letters, Season/Series 08 Spoilers, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 20:52:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenesaisquoi/pseuds/jenesaisquoi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A speculative glimpse of a day in Sam and Dean's new home. Sam finds the journal of Pope Paul III, and starts to put together what he knows of the Men of Letter and hunters. Could hunters have once been organized? All of this a drive to find out where the Men of Letters came from and what they were.</p><p>Kind of spoilers for 8x12, As Time Goes By and kind of preview spoilers for 8x13, Everybody Hates Hitler.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Time Goes By

There is a book, a journal really, which sits upon the shelves of a long hidden library, waiting to be discovered by a young man one day soon.

_Essendo una meditazione sulla natura della fede, Dio, e miracoli_

_Being a Meditation on the nature of Faith, God, and Miracles_  
 _The Abridged & Translated edition of the Journal of Pope Paul III_

_3 February 1535_

_I began my Papacy on 3 October 1534 and since then it has been a journey fraught with responsibility and the testing of my patience. These squabbling cardinals have grown frantic and the whole of civilization seems to be in upheaval._

_The followers of Martin Luther, that man who is a heretic at heart, continue to defy and disturb the natural order of the papal authority and the legitimate rule of the Christian Church under the command of God, the Divine. The German princes have come to deny the authority of Rome in all aspects and have gained enough power to demand equal footing. Equal footing! What world we live in that they should have the faculty to deny the Holy Church. Would that the armies of Rome could bring order back to the centre of civilization, but alas the politics have become far too entangled for this. Curse that man and his Theses._

_The English too have caught on and have begun leaning toward the protestations of the heretics. That horrible fool, Henry, cannot keep a wife and is willing to throw his country into turmoil._

_In the new world, there have been stirrings that barbarians are being enslaved! What is the world coming to I ask everyday._

_Privately, here, I will admit that some days I find my faith waning. Even now the scientists begin to find ways to transgress against God, the Divine, while those Lutheran followers spread like a miasma. What new horrors will the new world bring to the crumbling old foundations of civilization?_

"Hey Dean, check this out!"

"What is it, Sammy?"

"Pope Paul the third's journal," Sam says enthusiastically to Dean's blank face. "He was around during the Italian Renaissance."

"That's great, Sam."

"He was responsible for officially setting up the Inquisition! Responsible for countless lives and unspeakable tortures."

"You sound like a book, you know."

"And you're starting to sound like a one dimensional illiterate," Sam retaliates and angrily turns back to the journal.

_20 June 1535_

_Something wonderful has happened! A miracle to rival all miracles._

_I was in my chambers after a meeting with my Cardinals, when in the dim light of late evening there was a light so bright that I needed to shield my eyes lest they be burnt. When the holy light had gone, there stood the Angel Gabriel. Resplendant with the might of heaven, I recognized the Archangel and I knew I was in the presence of the glorious._

_"We have a task for you," said he. "You will find Brother Fernando Ludovico at the St Mary of the Angels Monastery in Firenze. Bring him and his work under the order of the Church."_

_"It will be done," said I, awed._

_My faith has been restored, and I no longer must slink in the shadows and secretly wonder if the LORD God has abandoned his children. This has confirmed it. I will set out tomorrow to complete the task that has been set before me, and I will continue the effort to eradicate the heresy that is running rampant through these lands. Perhaps an office of Cardinals to ensure maintenance of the Christian Church?_

"So apparently, Gabriel was a good little messenger boy, once upon a time."

"Huh."

"Can't you even pretend to be interested?"

"Dude, you've been looking at books since we got into this bat cave. Sorry but I don't feel like drowning in dust."

"I think this is important, Dean," Sam urges. "This book is one of the most opened."

"That's great, Sammy. You keep reading while I, am going to put up posters," Dean says, walking away with a grin that is painfully fake.

"We'll get him back. You that right? We always get Cas back in the end."

"Yeah, because I really want to take care of a crazy angel again," Dean says, sarcasm and tension spilling with the words.

"Dean, I know you're upset but--"

"Just drop it, Sam."

_23 June 1535_

_Myself and a retinue of guards have visited the Benedictine monastery of St Mary of the Angels and have met with young Brother Ludovico. He has told me the most horrifying of stories! Vampires, succubi, restless spirits--all the things to frighten children--are real. He said his father hunted them before he was killed and Ludovico had to take refuge with the monks._

_I would scarcely believe this if God Himself, had not led me to the young Benedictine._  
 _I see now that the threat to the Church is deeper than the spread of Luther's ideas and have devised a plans accordingly._

_I have set out orders for there to be established a secret order which will oversee the lore of these monsters, while Brother Ludovico will be given funds and authority to gather men and train them in the art of dispatching these vile creatures. The people must not know of this! It would spread panic throughout the region and there is enough turmoil in the light; no this will stay in the shadows._

_For the threat of the Lutheran parasite, I will begin to strengthen the office of the Inquisition We must find the heretics and teach them the proper ways in which to respect their LORD God. I can only hope that this will not take longer than we have._

Sam puts the book down, and leans back. Was this the beginning of hunting? He gets up to find Dean.

"Pass me the hammer, would you Sammy?" Dean asks, when Sam walks into his room. "So, what've you found?"

"I think the Men of Letters was created in Rome, during the Renaissance by Pope Paul and a monk named Ludovico." Sam pauses. "It might also have been the beginning of hunting."

Dean stops the hammer mid-swing and turns to face his brother. "The beginning of hunting?"

"Maybe. Or it was the beginning of the Men of Letters and their subsequent use of hunters. Or the organization of hunting, I don't know."

"Are you saying that hunters were once organized? Central command, a head honcho, and all that?"

"Maybe. Maybe it died with Abaddon?"

"Okay, so how come we've never had help from priests? And I don't mean the kind that know of the shady things in the dark."

"I don't think many people knew about this. The journal seems to suggest that the Men of Letters was supposed to be kept a secret so that the general public wouldn't freak out."

"Why didn't Henry mention any of this?"

"You mean when he flew out of the closet? Or when we were running from Abaddon? Or when he was dying?" Sam asks, pointedly.

"Okay okay. Secret order created by the church. Anything else?"

“I need to do some more research but I’ve got some idea of what happened based on another book--well another journal. This one written in 1931 by a Man of Letter--is that what they’re called?”

"I don't know, Sammy, just tell me what you've found," Dean says testily and Sam's really starting to get annoyed with his moody attitude.

"One, the Men of Letters was created by Pope Paul the third after Gabriel told him to go get the Benedictine monk Ludovico. Two, the men of letters may have been responsible for creating or at least organizing hunters.”

“So you think Abaddon is responsible for sending it all to hell?” Dean asks.

“It makes sense right?” Sam urges. “The hunters are organized, basically the soldiers of the Men of Letters. Abaddon comes around, destroys the order but mostly ignores the hunters…”

“Because she’s followed Henry into the future,” Dean supplies.

“Right, exactly. This is how hunters today end up wandering around, mostly aimless, just knowing they have to kill the monsters. I mean, why else have hunters never organized? The closest thing to an organizing system was Bobby, and now Garth.”

“Well, hunters aren’t the type that would like to hang about with each other,” Dean points out.

“What if there was a time though, Dean? Like what if because there was no central command, the hunters fell apart, turned away from each other because everything had fallen into chaos?”

“I don’t know, Sammy. This seems all a bit post-apocalyptic to me.”

“That’s the reason you’re giving? Dean we live in a post-apocalyptic world,” he points out. “Hunting’s been around since at least Samuel Colt. In all that time, no hunters have thought to organize?”

“No, because organizing is dangerous. It gives your enemy a target.”

“I still think hunters were organized.”

“It doesn’t make sense Sammy! Where’s the rest of the Men of Letters huh? If they’re as old as you say, then they must have been big enough to survive.”

“I don’t know! Maybe Abaddon hunted them down too! And Henry’s group was the last. We need to do more research, Dean--understand why our family was always going to be mixed up in the supernatural!”

Dean sighs, comes over to Sam, and starts to push him to the door. “Come on, let’s eat and have a beer. We can keep researching more tomorrow. I’ll even help.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is just pure speculation that I thought would be fun to work through in a story. It began with the idea that once the hunters were organized and then the hunting society dissolved as the Men of Letters fell apart. Then it branched out with the question of when exactly the Men of Letters were created.
> 
> Supernatural seems to stay largely within Western History and borrows quite a bit from Catholicism so it wasn't a stretch to think that maybe the Men of Letters was once tied to the Church.
> 
> History:  
> It really could have been set at any time probably, the Middle Ages maybe--the 12th and 13th centuries, right in the midst of the Crusades would be just as exciting. But I have an affinity and deep, abiding love for the Italian Renaissance. 
> 
> This work is in no way historically accurate and I've been a bit lazy with the research, and it all comes from Wikipedia.
> 
> It took me quite a while to figure out which pope would be the best and I finally settled on, Pope Paul III, who held the papacy from 1534 to 1549. He was, in fact, responsible for reorganizing the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in 1542, which gave it more power, from what I understand. One of the most famous trials of the Inquisition under Pope Paul III was that of Galileo Galilei shortly after he used the telescope to prove, empirically, Copernicus' heliocentric model of the solar system [this didn't go too well and Galileo was forced to retract his findings].
> 
> Pope Paul III wasn't all bad though, as he issued Sublimus Dei, a papal bull, against the enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. 
> 
> He, of course, did a whole bunch of other stuff but I'm not going to repeat all of the information here.
> 
> St Mary of the Angels Monastery is a real monastery in Florence, Italy. I saw it as I did a general search for Benedictine monasteries and thought it fit in to the world of Supernatural perfectly.
> 
> I question how appropriate the title in, but I'm a sucker for this song so it'll stay. Merci pour la lecture!


End file.
